10 easy ways to share food and drink with the less fortunate this season

Who knew that helping others could be as easy as ordering a burger or having beer delivered to your door? Here are 10 deliciously simple ideas for sharing with the less fortunate in the festive season:

1. The new programMealshare makes helping children and youth as easy as ordering dinner at a restaurant. Begun in Calgary three years ago, the program has spread to eight Canadian cities. Ottawa signed on in April now has more than 20 participating eateries, including the Clocktower Pubs, Social and Petit Bill’s Bistro.

To take part, peruse the menu for a dish with the Mealshare symbol (two overlapping plates with a horizontal fork on top) and a meal will be donated to Operation Come Home (for at-risk youth) or the Boys and Girls Club. Already this year, more than 11,000 meals have been donated.

2. The Ottawa Mission needs cash to pay for the 1,300 meals it serves year-round. A $10 donation buys three meals for a Mission resident or person in need. The easiest way to donate: Text the word “meal” to 45678. The $10 will simply be added to your cellphone bill.

3. Through Beau’s BYBO (Buy Your Beau’s Online) program you can have brews from the Vankleek Hill brewery delivered to your door, with the entire $8 delivery fee going to Operation Come Home, which helps Ottawa-area youths get off the street. You also get a charitable tax receipt. See bybo.ca for more.

4. The Christmas Exchange Program, which is in its 100th season of holiday helping, still needs people to sign on to fill and deliver about 6,000 Christmas hampers.

“We have a huge need,” says Megan O’Meara, the communications co-ordinator for the Caring and Sharing Exchange. “We’ve seen about a 30-per-cent increase in requests for hampers this year.”

To sponsor a hamper, sign up at caringandsharing.ca (click on Donate, then pull down to Sponsor a Hamper). You choose whether you want to help a smaller or larger family, or a senior, and the preferred area of town. Once you’re assigned a recipient, you make contact to ask about preferences or restrictions, and are sent a list of what to include in your hamper, which you deliver.

5. The Ottawa Food Bank appreciates the donated non-perishable food it receives. But your cash means five times as much.

“Every $1 given to the Ottawa Food Bank is worth $5 in food,” says executive director Michael Maidment. “We spend $1.4 million on groceries every year — and because we buy in bulk and get discounts because, well, we’re the food bank, we can make that money go five times as far. We can buy perishable things, like local ground beef or turkeys.”

6. For the last five years, Absinthe Café (1208 Wellington St. W.) has offered the Cornerstone Burger. It’s not only a juicy whopper involving smoked bacon, a secret sauce and with bacon-and-mushroom poutine on the side, $1 from each plate goes to Cornerstone Housing for homeless women. Over the years, that’s added up to more than $12,000.

Chef/owner Patrick Garland says he began preparing food for Cornerstone when he was worried about a resident who worked with him as a dishwasher, but got the burger idea from San Francisco’s Mission Burger chef Danny Bowien.

“He was giving a buck to a food bank for every burger he sold,” said Garland. “I figured I could at least do the same.”

7. The Youville Centre for adolescent moms and babies always needs donations for its on-site food bank — but never more than at Christmas. Basics such as canned vegetables, pasta, crackers and diapers (especially sizes 4, 5 and 6) are needed, and also treats such as hot chocolate or canned cranberries.

“If people had toys to donate that would be really wonderful too,” adds the centre’s Chloe Nosko. Toys should be appropriate for babies from three months or children up to about three years. Donations can be dropped off between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday at the centre at 150 Mann Ave. in Sandy Hill.

8. The emergency food bank at the Salvation Army shelter on George Street is a stop of last resort for many. Donations of easy-to-make foods, such as pasta and rice, and ingredients for a Christmas meal, such as a box of stuffing or a can of cranberries, are all urgently needed. You can drop items off 24/7 at the shelter at 171 George St. or, Mondays through Saturdays, at any of the eight area Salvation Army Thrift stores.

9. For the first time, the Shepherds of Good Hope is offering a calendar. Called A Taste for Hope, it features edgy photos of some of Ottawa’s top chefs plus recipes from cookbook author Margaret Dickenson. All funds from the sale of the $25 calendars go directly to the Shepherds, the largest non-profit organization dedicated to serving the poor and homeless in Ottawa. Order at shepherdsofgoodhope.com.

“One of the joys of the holidays is Christmas baking, but if you live in poverty, you don’t have the opportunity to do that,” says the centre’s director, Karen Secord. She arranged for skilled bakers to put on workshops each Wednesday this month. Participants get to take home tins of baking. “One older gentleman was so proud — he was going to give the cookies he made to his grandchildren.”

But the centre has no funding for supplies — everything from flour and butter to spices and sprinkles are needed. To donate, go to parkdalefoodcentre.ca, click on “Donate Now via Canada Helps” and pull down the menu box to support “Holiday Fund.”

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